


salad days

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [274]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Baby-sitting, F/M, Formenos, Gen, Parentification, Soft memories...and not so soft, a fic written long ago, it's been a while since we had Formenos Babies!, this is set shortly after Maedhros takes the babies to climb up the hill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25373722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: He does not think there is anything in him that is so extraordinary; it is only that he was fated since birth, being born first.
Relationships: Fëanor | Curufinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Nerdanel, Maedhros | Maitimo & Sons of Fëanor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [274]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Kudos: 16





	salad days

When rain falls on the summer-softened earth, the road runs with rivers. In a single night, the mud will hollow itself out like a vessel on Mother’s wheel, forming canals, coursing with fallen leaves, offering frogs a map of sorts. And yet, this map ends at Formenos Farm, at home, for Athair has packed the drive there very firmly with stone as well as soil, and it holds.

Thus, when Maglor and Maedhros trudge to the joint of the neat drive and the swimming road to meet the miserable, rain-soaked courier, they marvel at the way the ditch-edges suck at their boots.

This is a task they perform together, collecting the letters the courier brings. Ordinarily, the man would ride to the door of his intended recipient, praying fervently, perhaps, that whoever waited did not have a ferocious guard dog.

But Maedhros so loved to bring the letters and the occasional parcel, that he watched—even in inclement weather—for the flash of a horseman, and it had become a game of sorts for him and Maglor, meeting the riders halfway. Today, they came to the very end of the drive.

“You’re half-pints,” the courier says, disdainfully, but Maedhros says,

“Feanorian,” and that seems to put the man at sufficient ease. He has two letters and a damp brown-papered lump. Maglor hides all of them under his coat.

“You might let _me_ carry one,” Maglor pouts, a droplet falling from the end of his nose.

Maedhros feels a little selfish. A little less than good. But Maglor forgets, sometimes, to be very careful—and Athair will notice if the ink runs.

“Oh, this is too much!” Mother scolds, drying their hair with her apron and ordering them to be seated until she can prepare them some warm milk. The twins are crying heartily, and Maedhros wishes that he could go to them, but it does not seem wise to vex Mother by sneaking away.

“A little summer rain will do them no harm,” Athair says. His light, firm tread halts when he sees what the courier brought. “What have we here?”

“Lord knows,” Mother says, still distracted. “Maitimo, you know how susceptible Maglor is to sore throats. Do not let him follow you out, if you are inclined to skip through mud puddles.”

“I’m sorry, _Mamaí_ ,” Maedhros offers, penitently. But his eyes are on Athair; he knows what hand wrote one letter, at least. What can Grandfather Finwe have to say?

Athair, with his usual eagerness, tears that one open first. He frowns as he reads. He shapes a word with his mouth that Maedhros recognizes as a foul one, and then he takes himself and the letter away.

Only then does Mother notice. She shakes herself.

“Goodness, what can the matter be now?” This said thinly, and then her head turns to the crying twins.

Maedhros must pour the warm milk himself.

“It is so like them, those British-backed bastards,” Athair cries bitterly at supper. Curufin watches him with wide eyes, his fist almost in his potatoes. “To stir up trouble for their own countrymen!”

“What does your father think should be done?” Mother asks calmly, cutting Caranthir’s meat for him.

Maedhros cuts Celegorm’s meat. Celegorm is five, but still far from handy with a knife—or maybe he is _too_ handy, and they are all at the risk of bloodshed, with every cutlet of chicken served.

“Athair puts in a word and prayer for the Catholics. He always has, though I fear it falls on deaf ears.” Athair shakes his head. Strikes with his knife. Maedhros, watching him, is both fascinated and consumed. _This_ is why he runs to see what the outside world brings to them—because Athair must have whatever he wants, whatever he wishes to know.

“Cities are crowded places,” Mother says. She does not like cities. “There, Caranthir. Small bites, my love.”

“Eh?” says Athair.

“It is hard for anyone to share the labor equally. It is no surprise that some will take this opportunity to draw old battle lines.”

“Old battle lines!” Athair scoffs. “Spineless Protestants will lick at the heels of their conquering masters; they will not wage war themselves. Never let them be called Irish in my hearing.”

Curufin whimpers. Celegorm pounds his heels against the bench. Maglor arranges his peas in a line. He never listens to Athair’s rants unless he must. Maedhros must speak to him, of this.

“ _Mamaí_ —” He feels foolish asking—“We were never Protestants, were we?”

“My grandmother was.”

Maedhros feels a little sick. “Really?”

“Is this about supper?” She tucks Maglor in first; he is already half-asleep. Then she comes around to Maedhros’ side of the bed. “Your father is always concerned about the state of the world, Maitimo. You are too young for the world to concern _you_.”

He hopes this is true, but it is hard to reconcile with the truth of being a godfather, or of having six younger brothers to mind. He closes his eyes when she kisses his forehead, and when she is gone, he folds his hands together and prays.

 _Dear God, please keep us safe from the city. Please bless Mamaí and Athair. And all the boys._ He thinks their names in a quick rush, from Maglor to the twins.

Then he traces his fingers against each other. Feels the edges of his nails, the lines of his palms. Until he is tested— _really_ tested—he won’t know if he is enough.

Sometimes Maglor and Celegorm fight like a cat and a dog. It is unbecoming, because Maglor has begun to serve at the altar with Maedhros, and Celegorm is not exactly a baby. Maedhros is obliged to separate them on the braided rug, alarmed lest they screech so loud that they wake Amras and Amrod, who are finally asleep.

The rain has passed. Mother is in the garden, Athair is in his private room, studying the contents of the parcel that arrived the day before.

“He stole my abacus,” Maglor whines. “He tried to eat the beads!”

“They look like blueberries,” Celegorm explains, grinning. “Don’t taste like ‘em, though.”

“You _licked_ them?” Maglor cries, rage rising, and Maedhros is tempted to bury his head in his arms. Or run.

“Both of you _must_ be quiet,” he says, not snapping, but being older-brother-firm. “Mother will be angry at all of us, if the babies wake up.”

Curufin toddles through the kitchen, just out of Maedhros’ view. He tries to take an apple, pulls the whole basket down upon himself, and screams.

Mother does not hear, yet, but the babies begin to cry. Maedhros takes the steps of the stairs two at a time, a trick he has mastered thanks to his newly lengthening legs, and slips through the door to Athair and Mother’s bedroom.

The twins are not quite five months old, and as such, Mother lets them take their daily naps in the center of her bed. In more peaceful moments, Maedhros has seen how they fold towards each other, strawberry heads turned in profile, plump fists tangled together.

Now they are pink, splayed outwards, voices rising.

Maedhros climbs atop the bed and slips in between them. He does not want to weather Mother’s anger; Maglor has likely lost his battle with Curufin already, and Maedhros fears that three crying children will be too much for the day’s harmony to recover.

Maedhros is not _afraid_ of Mother; never that. He only does not want for her afternoon to be spoilt.

Amrod is the feistier of the twins. He wriggles energetically, turning from belly to back with the sort of alarming ease that shall soon relegate him to a cradle. Maedhros lies on his back, draws his knees up to a steepled angle, and lifts Amrod to lean against them. This done, Maedhros curls Amras into the crook of his left arm, and hushes them both as best he can.

“Shh—shh—bairns, it’s all well. I promise. I _promise_.” These are, of course, words more for himself than them. He knows they cannot understand. Nonetheless, Amrod blinks down at him, and Amras coos more than he whimpers, and Maedhros feels an enormous glow of success burning within and around him, which he shall remember for some time.

“What do you think of Fingolfin?” Athair asks. 

Athair and Maedhros are by the pond, because Athair thinks that he has seen a Northern Pike there. Pikes are shrewd predators, and will cruelly devour many of the fish that enter the pond from its gentle stream. Athair says that if they catch him now, the summer harvest will not suffer for him.

Preoccupied as he was by the subject of fish, Maedhros was not expecting such a question. He freezes. The pike do that too; they hold quite still so as to trick their prey into coming close enough—

But Maedhros is not hunting anything.

“He is…” The day is not over-warm, yet his face grows hot. “He is very serious.”

Athair does not like Uncle Fingolfin. This, Maedhros knows. Maedhros does not know him well, but were he any other man of Athair’s acquaintance, Maedhros would _speak_ well of him, so as to be polite. He does not dare speak highly of his uncle, now.

Does not dare even call him his uncle, unless Athair is in an amiable mood.

“So he has been considered, since childhood.” Athair’s eyes are trained on the water. “But in truth, he is _sentimental_. I want you to understand from a young age, Maedhros, what a danger sentiment can be.”

Sentiment, in Maedhros’ present understanding, is just a tender, pointed feeling for a thing.

But he nods.

Athair explains. “To be sentimental is to lift one’s own feelings—even one’s own affections—above what is right, or necessary. Fingolfin cherishes his grudges as if they are prize hunting hounds. He pets his preferences; he coddles his political ideas. But because he does all this with a long face, men think him serious.”

“Oh,” Maedhros gasps, wishing that they would find the pike.

“In your grandfather’s recent letter,” Athair says, referring to the one that Maedhros delivered to him three days past, “He told me that Fingolfin has taken it upon himself to engage both Catholics _and_ Protestants, for labor associated with his business.”

“That is a pity,” Maedhros murmurs, because Athair plainly believes that it is.

“A great pity. Forcing compromise where none can _last_. And doing so from roots of Anglican blood! Sentiment drives the action, and sentiment will forestall the attainment of true principles, all because he believes this to be a conflict between him and me.”

“Why…” But Maedhros swallows the word. “Was it always so? Between you and—Fingolfin?”

Athair sighs. He shifts his glance to Maedhros, his scrutiny absolute.

“It was always so,” he answers. “It had to be. His life was purchased at great cost to me. We are fated from birth, Maedhros. Even to hatred.”

Maglor teased a sugarplum from Mother after supper, one of Easter’s last bounties, and now he will not sleep. “Do you remember…”

Maedhros almost wants to put his hands over his ears. But even in the dark, Maglor will know, and be hurt.

“What?” he asks.

“When we were very small. You used to climb into the crib, sometimes.”

Maglor is eight years old, and thinks himself already grown to man’s estate. Maedhros cannot deceive him as easily as he once did. “Yes,” says Maedhros.

“Why?”

“What?”

“Why,” Maglor asks again. “Why did you do that? You had your own bed.”

“You were warm,” Maedhros tells him. “My hands and feet were cold, and you were almost a baby, so you didn’t mind.”

“You were sad, then,” Maglor says. “I remember that you were sad.”

Winter nights are made cozy by the hearth, but Maedhros finds he prefers the edge of summer, when Athair opens all the windows in the sitting room and the fresh breeze streams past Mother’s thin, cream-colored curtains. Celegorm and Caranthir battle with their wooden animals on the floor. Maglor is playing the piano with one hand. Curufin is in Athair’s arms, and Maedhros and Mother have a twin each.

Maedhros bounces Amrod gently, and watches how Athair holds Curufin. It was hard, at first, when Curufin did not run to him—did not seem to love his eager eldest brother as much as the others had loved him. Maedhros was almost too young to remember a time before Maglor, but the haze he _did_ recall was filled with only hope and excitement at the prospect of another child in the house.

Celegorm…Caranthir…for each he was older. Abler. It is just that Curufin, since early babyhood, has wanted Athair almost more than anyone else.

 _He looks like me, that is why_ , Athair said, and he even found a miniature of himself, painted when his mother was still alive, that showed him as an elfin, delicate creature.

No wonder, Maedhros decides, pressing a soft kiss between Amrod’s wide eyes, his questioning brows. No wonder that Curufin loves Athair best, for Athair has loved _him_ so very completely, since the beginning.

Maedhros must remember this lesson. Must remember what it means to come first, and leave first, to be the one whose presence is looked-for, whose love is cherished and achieved.

He does not think there is anything in him that is so extraordinary; it is only that he was fated since birth, being born first.

He does not understand how all this differs from _sentiment_ , but he knows he must try.


End file.
